Uranium on the Moon

Found by a Japanese probe.

This could be a meaningless incident, or it could change the course of history.

The obvious use is a self-sustaining lunar settlement (once you've made the start-up investment). Safety issues aside, I'm skeptical about the economics of shipping uranium to earth, but what about the very rare elements?

Unintended Consequences of Al Capone's Conviction

The Feds couldn't prove Capone was guilty of his real crimes (who would testify against him?), so they nailed him on tax evasion. A reasonable recourse under the circumstances.

But now you get stuff like this:

Indicted billionaire headed to Texas
...
All seven are charged with wire fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Stanford also is charged with conspiring to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission proceeding.

Conspiring to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission proceeding. What does that even mean? What does obstructing an SEC proceeding mean, let alone conspiring to obstruct the proceeding?

My take is that the government is criminalizing things that are inconvenient to it. Just like this:

...Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators and sentenced in July 2004 to serve a five month term in a federal correctional facility and a two year period of supervised release (to include five months of home confinement).

Notwithstanding how I despise Martha Stewart, notwithstanding the likelihood that Stanford defrauded his investors, something is very wrong here.

It's not just that the book gets thrown at people who run afoul of federal prosecutors. It's that the book has metastasized by orders of magnitude.

Not Ready Unfit for Prime Time

Palin just doesn't have what it takes.

Too bad, but that's the way the wind has been blowing for a long time.

Colin Powell was right about her. Camille Paglia was wrong.

Some States Cut Back on Prison Food

When the economy was nominally good, state governments were spending like drunken sailors: well past the rate of economic growth.

Now that things are bad, they're cutting back--on prison food. (HT: Dr. Helen)

Make no mistake, readers in the private sector. They'd treat you the same way if they could get away with it.

And they're working toward being able to get away with it. (Not necessarily deliberately. Government tends to grow unless explicitly checked.)

Good Jobs at Good Wages

Reuters headline: The Average Green Employee Makes $76,000. To whom is the money going?

JOB FUNCTION PERCENT AVG BASE SALARY AVG BONUS
Analysis 18 $64,000 $11,000
Broking 2 $86,000 $32,000
Consulting 31 $66,000 $10,000
Engineering 5 $62,000 $6,500
Legal Services 1 $135,000 $36,500
Management 20 $97,500 $27,000
Marketing/Sales 8 $78,500 $25,000
Media/PR 1 $63,500 $11,500
Trading 6 $93,500 $120,000
Other 8 $74,500 $26,500

Engineers receive the lowest salaries and lowest bonuses. Lawyers and bean counters are paid the most.

My goodness, what a surprise that the people working with the technology are at the bottom of the totem pole.

The green economy: what a sham, what a scam.

Abortion "Protestors"

After the murder of George Tiller, an LGF commenter remembers:

They decided to go after me after I began volunteering as a NOW clinic escort in my home town of Pensacola, a town in which abortion clinics have been firebombed nearly a dozen times, and in which two doctors and one clinic escort have been murdered by two different people - Michael Griffin and the Methodist preacher Paul Hill. I just happened to drive by one day and saw women being beaten with wooden protest placards as they tried to enter or leave the clinics, so I began helping them in and out, shielding them with my body, and taking the blows intended for them on my own head and shoulders. The vicious and abusive protesters were bussed to the clinic on a weekly basis from a Southern Baptist and an Assembly of God church.

First, they illegally accessed my college transcripts, to help them build a profile to help them phone harrass me more effectively. I received sometimes hundreds of calls a day, for weeks on end, from many different phone booths by many different people, condemning and threatening me. When that didn't work, they began surveilling my home, trailing me wherever I went, and then they sabotaged my car. Finally, they strangled my family cat to death and hung it from a tree in my backyard by a noose around its neck, and safety pinned a note to its belly reading YOU'RE NEXT, BABY KILLER! But I never stopped helping those women.

Memorial Day

Colin Powell:

[F]ar from being the Great Satan, I would say that we are the Great Protector. We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated Fascism. We defeated Communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people.

And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, "Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us"? No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are.

Obama Eyes Socialism

Dinocrat notes that hedge funds are unhappy after donating heavily to the Obama campaign.

The Administration's desire to regulate their pay just might get their attention.

A Democratic former SEC Chairman is critical:

...Arthur Levitt warned the Obama administration and U.S. regulators against attempting to change the way executives at financial firms are compensated.

“Government can jawbone, but for government to regulate I think is overkill and very mistaken because you don’t know where it’s going to end,” Levitt said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today. Efforts by the Obama administration to change Wall Street pay practices are “totally wrongheaded,” he said.

The people pushing this are very mistaken, but I fear they do know where they intend it to end--and it won't be just with the financial services industry.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party continues its principled opposition: opposition to Charles Darwin, Roe v. Wade, and gay marriage. Note to the GOP: an armageddon indeed is taking shape, but not the kind you apparently have in mind.

Advice for a Lost Elephant

Reuters:

President Barack Obama proposed on Thursday nearly doubling funds to enforce U.S. tax laws next year, with an aim of more than quadrupling funding for tax compliance to $2.1 billion within five years.

How about explaining to the public that the enforcement budget will not focus on wealthy people who have the resources to contest the IRS? No, Middle America, it will go toward shaking down you.

It's imperative that the GOP develop a positive constructive message, but something like this is too obvious to pass up.

The Peasantry is Disgruntled

According to Rasmussen polling, half the general population has a favorable view of the recent tea party protests; 81% of the political class has an unfavorable view. 25% of Americ an adults know someone who attended a tea party; less than 1% of the political class do.

Tinfoil Hats for All?

This guy is applying brain scanning to advertising.

Will this start being done remotely? Not just for data gathering, but during negotiations? What about interrogations?

This Guy Has Guts

Clifford Asness.

Addendum 20090523. He has lost control of his temper before, and his funds (apparently) are emerging from a bad time.

I Hope Warren Buffett Was Misquoted

At his recent shareholders' meeting, Buffett on the recession:

“I think that virtually everybody associated with the financial world contributed to it,” Buffett said of the crisis. “Some of it stemmed from greed, some from stupidity, some from people saying the other guy was doing it.”

At CNBC a month or two earlier, Bueffett on the recession:

Well, we went wrong originally because we had a belief that--and everybody had the belief. I had it, the government had it, mortgage lenders had it, borrowers had it, media had it, everybody thought house prices could go nothing but up and--or at least they couldn't go down a lot.

I'd have a lot more confidence in the CNBC Buffett than in the other one.

Mercy...No...Oh Please, Mercy...

Apparently this is not a joke:

Jeb Bush to help party rebuild
Former Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican leaders are holding the first of a series of town hall meetings aimed at remaking the party's image.

Not everyone agrees:

''Jeb may be a better spokesman for the Republican Party than Rush Limbaugh, but that's a very low bar,'' quipped Democratic state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach...

The new group also includes Republican presidential nominee John McCain, prompting the national Democratic Party to circulate a blogger's snarky observation that 'things are really humming along when your `rebranding' effort is led by your recently crushed presidential nominee and your discredited party leader's brother.''

Sayfie called that a ''cheap shot.'' He added, ``People judge the governor on his record and the president on his record.''

It might be a cheap shot, but it's a direct hit too.

Oh, and the story says that Mitt Romney is in on it too.

Stem Cells in China

In view of recent biotech fraud, this should be taken with salt:

The U.S. is a bit late to the global stem cell research game. Japan’s Dr. Shinya Yamanaka demonstrated the ability to reprogram adult cells to behave as embryonic stem cells as early as 2007. But it is in China’s Guangdong Province that there have been almost miraculous strides in actually using stem cells to treat and cure diseases such as blindness, cerebral palsy, and spinal cord injuries.
...
Regenerative medicine is the future. Asia will be at its center. More and more western scholars and doctors are coming to China to collaborate.

Nevertheless, it shows how the wind is blowing.

If I were the Chinese, I'd donate heavily to American creationists and Western environmental extremists.

I'd prefer America to lead humanity into the future, but progress is more important than who makes it.

Priceless

"I am the Very Model of a Modern Libertarian"

Note to Self

The next time you see an interesting right-of-center headline that decries our fiscal mess, search the text for 'Bush'. If the word does not appear, move on immediately.

The only exception is writers who have established a long-term record of credibility.

Not a Dime's Worth of Difference...

Rasmussen Reports:

51% View Tea Parties Favorably, Political Class Strongly Disagrees

Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week, including 32% who say their view of the events is Very favorable. (p)Thirty-three percent (33%) hold an unfavorable opinion of the tea parties according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.

...the nation’s Political Class has a much dimmer view—just 13% of the political elite offered even a somewhat favorable assessment while 81% said the opposite. Among the Political Class, not a single survey respondent said they had a Very Favorable opinion of the events while 60% shared a Very Unfavorable assessment.

One-in-four adults (25%) say they personally know someone who attended a tea party protest. That figure includes just one percent (1%) of those in the Political Class.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Political Parasite Class.

Fixed it.

Outrage!! The Nasssty Governments Won't Let Goldman Ssachs Pay Off TARP!

Bloomberg reports:

Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, 54, wants to refund money received from the U.S. Treasury to run the bank without any limits on compensation.

But the government may not let Goldman repay, thunders Henry Blodgett. Are we going to be a market economy or a command economy? Are we on the brink of communism? Etc etc

Back to the Bloomberg piece:

Even after repaying funds to the U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program, Goldman Sachs intends to take advantage of government help by continuing to sell low-interest debt backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said on a conference call today.

Goldman Sachs has sold one $2 billion bond without an FDIC guarantee and about $22 billion with the backing since the government program became available in October.

“It’s still attractive to have the FDIC-insured debt,” Viniar said in an interview today. “We’ve issued some non- guaranteed, we expect to issue more non-guaranteed, but the FDIC-insured is also attractive.”

That puts things in a different light...

More here.

Earth Without People, Hurray!

Dinocrat quotes:

“We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend toward fatness, and recognize it as a key factor in the battle to reduce (carbon) emissions and slow climate change”…

The underlying attitude here is totalitarian. This guy pretty much nails it, IMO:

What they want is a a command-and-control economy based on scarcity of resources. And of course, once widespread scarcity is established, THEY will be in control of the scarce resources, so WE will OBEY.

Somewhere, Mencken is not surprised:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

And then there are the Earth Without People people:

The environazis are not interested in renewable energy because they are not interested in renewable people. These are anti-human…opposed to our very existence.

You have to wonder what induced the level of self-loathing required to make some people hate absolutely everything associated with their species. But there you have it.

I'm baffled. I have no idea of how to communicate with someone who thinks this way.
***************
I don't know if the climate is warming, cooling or trendlessly fluctuating, or whether anthropogenic warming and natural cooling are offsetting each other. IMHO the proper long-term recourse is geoengineering--reversible geoengingeering, thank you very much--, and I support research into such proposals even when the motivation seems half-cocked.

The Religious Right

I finally had occasion to jot down my impression.

The religious kook right favored big government as a means to impose their agenda on the country. They thought that small-government voters and centrists would have no choice but to vote Republican. They deliberately allied with the Abramoffs in the GOP and blew off the limited-government wing. They counted on a permanent Republican majority in which they would pull the strings.

After the complete collapse of their strategery, their reaction isn't pretty. They don't acknowledge that they were wrong or mistaken and need to change. No, they believe God is testing the righteous, i.e. them, while He prepares to smite the nation for its sins, i.e. for throwing them out of power.

The refusal to learn or adjust is the worst part of the situation.

Afterthought. Call the GOP's controlling coalition an alliance between the influence peddlers and moral dirigistes aka culture warriors.

My Sentiments Exactly

Seen at a Tennessee tea party:

A sign near the center of the crowd summed up the sentiment succinctly: Above side-by-side pictures of President Bush and President Obama were the words “Dumb & Dumber”.

It's too bad the tea parties didn't start under Bush.

Afterthought. The Boston Tea Party was about illegitimate taxes. The main point of the current protests is that illegitimate government spending will ruin future generations and bankrupt the country.

Calling the protests tea parties helps get attention and so does holding them on April 15, but the implication is inaccurate. The passions behind the Boston Tea Party and contemporary protests may be similar, but the issues are different. Today's labeling predisposes the underlying message to be distorted by opponents and misunderstood by the public.

The mislabeling will be corrected if the protests jell into a long-term constructive political movement.

Classic Posts

Most online content is not of permanent value. Two exceptions are below.

The 2003 Glenn Reynolds on loving monsters. (Unfortunately Reynolds spreads himself too thin nowadays.)

Megan McArdle on gay marriage (with an addendum here).

As Timely Today as Twenty Years Ago

P.J. O'Rourke's 'The Piece of Ireland That Passeth All Understanding'.

And not just the Irish. Consider Serbs and Croats, for example. No need to mention Africa.

Intellectual Property and the Economy

Afaic "intellectual property" (patents, copyrights, trademarks) is a social contract. Afaic parasitical rent-seeking special interests have distorted the underlying law to the point at which intellectual property does more harm than good.

Despite the excesses and misuse, incentivizing innovation and progress sounds like a worthy concept. However, two reputable economists argue that the concept is inherently flawed and we'd be better off without it.

Copyright and Terrorism

Does the content industry's government-abetted predatory behavior facilitate terrorism? A couple of comments to that effect are plausible on their face. By creating a mass market for circumventions of "intellectual property", the industry may have stimulated development of evasive technologies that the bad guys would not have invented on their own. Mass circumventions have enabled the few actual villains to hide like needles in a haystack.

A Shout Out to VDH: Thank You!

Column after column, year after year, Victor Davis Hanson drones out his unhip historical truths.

If conservatism survives this rudderless period, it will be because people like Hanson staid the course.

Obama and JFK

The press gushes over Obama while ignoring his inexperience and gaffes. Comparisons to JFK continue.

Soviet Premier Khrushchev supposedly sized up JFK as weak when the two met. This perception emboldened Khrushchev to put Soviet missiles into Cuba, thereby precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis.

(Speaking of comparisons: the left dismisses or ignores Obama's blunders; Bush loyalists mocked his critics as educated dopes who didn't understand strategery.)

Charges Dropped Against Ted Stevens

The prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense.

...it appeared that the prosecutors who tried Mr. Stevens on ethics charges would themselves now face ethics charges.
...
Judge Sullivan recently ordered that some of the government lawyers involved be held in contempt of court, including the two top officials of the Justice Department’s public integrity division, the section that prosecutes official corruption.

I'd like to know these government lawyers' political backgrounds. The investigation of the government lawyers should pursue potential links to the Democratic Party's campaign apparatus. Fat chance, of course.

(Not that I'm a fan of porkmeister Ted Stevens.)

Prison Reform: Bravo for Jim Webb

The prison system American gulag is a national disgrace (as is the vile War on Drugs). Consider the fraction of the population that's incarcerated. Consider the public attitude: don't bend over for the soap nyuk nyuk hyuk. Reminescent of the Roman mob.

To his great credit, Jim Webb, to whom I donated when he knocked off the Great Theocratic Hope George MacacAllen, is risking significant political capital on doing something about it. See here, here and here.

Addendum. Webb was mentioned as a vice-presidential nominee and has campaigned with Obama. Is he doing this with Obama's support or at his instigation? (Because Obama does not want to get accused of playing racial politics.) The possibility warrants mention.

Whatever. I strongly support what Webb is doing.

Tax Havens

A month ago I commented at Dinocrat:

Why is the government choosing now to hound a major, fragile Swiss bank about confidential American deposits? It reminds me of the Bush administration’s sending Drug Warriors to eradicate Afghan poppy crops–just as the Taliban is making a comeback. (Presumably the Chinese would be more than happy to pick up where the Swiss may be forced to leave off, and they could make the Swiss look like small-time operators.)

The AP reports:

However, experts such as Florida tax lawyer William M. Sharp say the victory some are claiming over tax havens may be short lived. While the flow of untaxed money to places like Switzerland and Liechtenstein will diminish, new destinations are emerging in Asia and the Middle East that will be harder to crack, he says.

The Middle East hadn't crossed my mind, but it makes sense.

The GOP's Numberless Budget

The GOP House leadership held a press conference to present a Republican alternative to Obama's budget.

Except they didn't have any numbers. (H/T: LGF)

How can the GOP be so incompetent? Maybe it's because they won Congress at the beginning of the peace dividend and holiday from history. They take these conditions as facts of nature.

The Democrats also take them as facts of nature, but their time as the minority has made them hungrier and more politically adroit than the Republicans. Unfortunately for the country, they are looking even less fit to govern.

T. Boone Pickens' Father in the News

He is quoted:

My dad once said to me, "Son, a fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan."

sigh What do you call a company run by a planless genius who reflexively meddles in any project that shows promise?

Unprofitable.

The Complexity Bubble: It Keeps Growing and Growing...

Live free or die, my ***:

Ban on Feet-Nibbling Fish Leaves Nail Salons on the Hook
Mr. Ho's Import From China Caught On, But Some State Pedicure Inspectors Object

The U.S. Agency for International Development distributes condoms overseas. It is switching from American-made condoms to offshore ones:

"Of course, we considered how many U.S. jobs would be affected by this move,” said a USAID official who spoke on the condition that he would not be named. But he said the reasons for the change included lower prices (2 cents versus more than 5 cents for U.S.-made condoms) and the fact that Congress dropped “buy American language” in a recent appropriations bill.

I'm all for free trade, but I wonder why Congress dropped the buy American language during a serious recession[1].
---------------
[1] Note the scare headline: "U.S. to buy Chinese condoms, ending Alabama jobs." In the text:

In a move expected to cost 300 American jobs, the government is switching to cheaper off-shore condoms, including some made in China. [emphasis mine]

In fairness, there's this from the USAID spokesman:

Besides, he said, the sole U.S. supplier — an Alabama company called Alatech — had previous delivery problems under the program. (p)It's clear that Alatech's problems over the years, which apparently have been resolved, may have driven U.S. officials to seek much less expensive foreign-made condoms in the first place.

FDR's Restrained Use of Power?

I didn't know he refused urges to assume dictatorial powers.

My Reaction: Nausea, Shame, and Fear

The House voted to retroactively tax the AIG bonuses.

It's claimed that the people who ruined AIG are long gone and in effect the bonuses are being given to the janitors hired to clean up the mess.

If they did walk out the door, who would volunteer to work at the Chernobyl of the financial world? And what would become of the mammoth portfolio that remains?

"It would become the biggest naked position on Wall Street," one longtime Financial Products executive said, "and everybody would exploit it."
...
"Nobody is going to give it back and then stay," said one of the firm's employees. "If they give back the money, then they will walk. And they will walk into the arms of AIG's counterparties."

Failure of AIG was said to imply the collapse of the world financial system…

These people are receiving death threats, and politicians like Cuomo and Frank are pushing to have their names made public.

Is this the worst Congressional abuse we've seen since the McCarthy era?

(To be sure, the rulebook gets thrown out the window when the national interest is seriously threatened. But that's obviously not the case here. Or it wasn't.)

Is this the worst abuse of Congressional power since the McCarthy era? The effects could be even more destructive. Who will trust the United States after seeing this? I’m appalled. I’m ashamed. I’m scared.

Even if the effects are not apocalyptic, note that they’ve set the precedent of a 90% tax.

Vermin.

And half of the Republicans went along.

Corrupt gutless morons.

Divided government is the only reason I see to vote Republican.

Addendum. Connecticut's Republican governor, Democrat Attorney General, and Democrat legislature are piling on, issuing subpoenas to the AIG bonus recipients and CEO. And the NY Attorney General has demanded and obtained the names. Their names and home towns are being published. Voices of sanity are being ignored.

The American political class is threatening and ripping at the AIG people while they are literally struggling to save the world.

I Recant

I voted for Obama. I was wrong. I recant. If I could do it over, I would vote for McCain.

I will not vote for Obama in 2012. I will not vote for him even if his opponent is worse--which is entirely possible in this declining nation. (May Heaven lead us to a renaissance.)

Some things are more important than temperament. Some things are automatically beyond the pale, with no questions asked.

I didn't want to believe this. I waited for clarification. It came. Obama is serious about requiring wounded veterans to use private insurance to pay for their medical care.

This is more disgusting than the Lewinsky scandal.
***************
More here.

Update. Retraction of the plan was too reluctant to make a difference to me.

Alas, Babble On

There's discussion of John Derbyshire's How Radio Wrecks the Right.

Not twenty years ago the Republicans were the party of ideas.  The party of the future.  The party of insight. Now it's the party of Rush Limbaugh and Mike Huckabee.

What happened?  A Christian conservative poet might have an explanation:

...Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
*****************
I don't turn Limbaugh off when I chance on him, but I don't seek him out either.

IMHO serious conservative and libertarian thought acknowledges the necessity of difficult compromises between legitimate but conflicting values and aspirations. You don't win elections or a mass radio audience by talking about the tragic sense of life, but a political movement that ignores these things altogether will ultimately be trivial.

Back to the Uptick Rule

Bloomberg:

Daniel Aromi and Cecilia Caglio, economists at the SEC in Washington, said in a December report to former Chairman Christopher Cox that the so-called uptick rule was less effective when needed most, during panics that drive prices down and volatility up.

Who cares? We have to Do Something. Scapegoats must be found.

I'm about as persuaded about the uptick rule as I am that Global Warming is an urgent threat.

Good Point About American 'Meritocracy'

From Dinocrat commenter Paul:

It’s what you get from a team of glorified clerks, Yale/Harvard system gamers. They’ve grade grubbed, networked, sniffed their way to the top and now out in front, in the clear and separated from their elderly, formal mandarin institutions are clueless.

Like Churchill said, a very bad system, but...

Huh? The What Was Where? When? Why??

Ray Kurzweil's book "The Singularity is Near" (TSIN) came out in 2005. Columnist Kevin Drum wrote positively about the book but quibbled slightly. He extrapolated a log-log plot in the book and wondered why the immminence of the Singularity wasn't already obvious in 2005. Kurzweil emailed Drum:

It isn’t valid to extend a log-log plot. A progression is valid by showing exponential growth along a linear time axis, so a graph with a linear x (time) axis and a log y axis can be validly extended (provided of course that one has analyzed the paradigm being measured and shown that it will not saturate to an asymptote)...

So the point of the log-log plot is simply to show that a phenomenon has in fact accelerated in the past. It is not valid to extend the line. For one thing the log-log plot cannot go into the future because that is the nature of the log time axis...

In 2006 Kevin Kelly took up the issue and reposted Drum's extrapolation (click on the image to view a nontruncated version):Kurzweil responded to Kelly like he had to Drum:

You cite the extension made by Kevin Drum of the log-log plot that I provide of key paradigm shifts in biological and technological evolution...This extension is utterly invalid. You cannot extend in this way a log-log plot for just the reasons you cite. The only straight line that is valid to extend on a log plot is a straight line representing exponential growth when the time axis is on a linear scale and the a value (such as price-performance) is on a log scale...But it is not valid to extend the straight line when the time axis is on a log scale. The only point of these graphs is that there has been acceleration in paradigm shift in biological and technological evolution.

Unfortunately, by the time Drum appended Kurzweil's email to his review, I had lost the URL. By chance I recently rediscovered it on Singularity disbeliever PZ Myers' blog.

What to make of all this? sigh I've already spent too much time--and not enough time--thinking about it so I'm going to stop arbitrarily. My apologies to Kurzweil and other authors & commenters if I'm unaware of relevant insights. The following is way too speculative for my liking, but here goes:

For the purposes of this post, I ignore Myers' contentions and accept Kurzweil's chart as valid. I assume that his plotted 'events' were chosen a priori without using a preconceived mathematical model. Upon scrutiny, the plot reveals interesting properties and implications[1].

a. It resembles a log-log plot of a power law. Curiously, TSIN's discussion of the figure does not mention the power-law interpretation.

b. There are constraints on the "times to the next event": between any two events A and B, the sum of the 'times to the next event' equals the total time elapsed between A and B. That is obvious of course, but it has implications for the spacing of events that obey a power law or any formula for that matter. (Cf. Myers' harsh criticism of Kurzweil's selection of events.)

c. The overall slope of the 'line' is more or less consistent with a value of -1. A(n approximately) unit slope is noteworthy (each event is half as close to the Singularity as its predecessor), but why not some other number? I won't give equations, but basic engineering math suffices for handwaving arguments that the number of events will multiply logarithmically as the Singularity is approached. A logarithmic Singularity is not Kurzweil's preferred scenario, but he mentions it on p. 495.

d. Like commenter dreish at KurzweilAI.net, I am unpersuaded by Kurzweil's criticism of Drum's extrapolation. Extending a line segment over a distance smaller than its length is plausible on its face. Kurzweil should make a better argument.

e. Drum's extrapolation begs a question that neither his post nor Kurzweil's response addresses. It seems reasonable to try to use 'countdown' data to forecast when the Singularity will occur. If that's not the case, why not? (Per 'dreish', consider the time axis, i.e. "years before today's date as of writing". If the 'date of writing' were the Singularity onset date, then events should have multiplied and clustered as the Singularity approached in real time; the x-axis of a log-time plot would have to be extended to display the real-time clustering. For a date of writing slightly before the Singularity onset date, I'd expect Kurzweil's existing log-log plot to depart from a straight line when the time between events becomes smaller than the time to the Singularity. [For a date of writing after the Singularity, the straight line would change to a "waterfall" near the onset time.] If the data is good enough, the deviation from a straight line might yield an estimate the time of the Singularity. Kurzweil does not discuss the issue. In fact, he describes the World Wide Web as an 'event' but, surprisingly, does not predict the time to the event that will follow the WWW.)

f. Afterthought. Note that if, as a function of the time to the Singularity, the time between events scales with a power less than one, the total number of events will necessarily be finite. (For sufficiently small positive x, x to a power is less than x if the power is less than one. Thus, it would be impossible to pack an infinite number of events close to each other as the Singularity approaches.) It's not clear how to interpret such a situation.

There is more to the Countdown plot than meets the eye at first glance. It's not entirely apparent whether the chart is meant to be descriptive or quantitative. If it's quantitative, it points to more information than has been extracted to date. Addressing Myers' criticism might be happen as a byproduct of digging such information out. How will the chart look when drawn at the Singularity? Will it retain its current linear form, or will the shape change? Either outcome would be interesting.
--------------------------------------
[1] NB: in TSIN, the chart that Drum noticed is followed by over 600 pages including 100 pages of annotated footnotes. IMO the Drum-Kurzweil kerfluffle is interesting precisely because new things can be said without tangling with the interlinked sprawl of the overall book.

Buyer-Remorse Bumper Sticker

Maybe some enterprising person will start printing these with the current year thereon, if you get my drift. I'm thinking of ordering a few and sending them to my Congressman, governor, the DNC...

Panic Mongering or Incompetence?

I increasingly see annualized numbers reported as monthly or quarterly ones. David Gergen at AC360:

Last Friday, we learned that the economy contracted in the 4th quarter by over 6 percent.

During the evening of March 3, I submitted a correction that the rate was annualized. No correction has been made.

Layers and layers of editors and fact checkers...

Laura Rowley, a Yahoo "financial columnist", writes:

...If I take out a mortgage whose terms I don't understand, and my home value doesn't rise as I expected, then that's my responsibility. If I buy mortgages or other debt, bundle, securitize, and sell them, and fail to properly assess their risk (or lose the paperwork), that's my responsibility and my institution's responsibility.

And if I issue credit default swaps to insure collateralized debt obligations and never actually had the collateral to back them up, that's not only my responsibility -- it's fraud, and I should be arrested for a crime.

The text moves from sensible to deranged. Let's see: if all of a bank's loans are not paid back and the bank goes under, is that fraud? If the Yellowstone Caldera erupts and wrecks half the country, is that fraud on the part of the insurance industry? Is a bank supposed to hold a dollar in cash for every dollar it loans? Should an insurance company keep the cash value of all its outstanding premiums?

Reader rating on the article is 4.5/5.0.

Who are the Short Sellers?

The uptick rule has been a whipping boy in the market decline, but some skepticism is emerging as people examine the issue in detail.

Like Jim Cramer, Jack Risko has been criticizing short sellers and the uptick rule in particular. Supposedly they act like a pack to bring down a weak stock, and this is imperilling the financial system since big banks are currently weak.

I'm unconvinced that short sellers are not revealing the true value of overpriced banks and thereby legitimately contributing to price discovery. If short sellers are involved in a vicious circle, I'm unconvinced that it's a deliberate conspiracy; it could be emergent behavior that mimics conspiratorial actions.

But another interpretation altogether crossed my mind: the short-selling could be legitimate hedging.

IMHO the picture underlying option valuation is that the reward/risk ratios of a stock and its options should be the identical. Accordingly, under idealized conditions, you can construct a combination of stock and option such that the risks cancel each other out: this recipe leads to the Black-Scholes valuation equation.

Suppose you're a market maker who sells a put option on BankAmerica. You have taken the risk that the stock will be sold back to you at a higher price than the market will charge. To reduce that risk, you hedge by shorting the stock. The more the stock drops, the more you should short in order to minimize the risk. If the stock develops a strong downward trend, you the put seller will act so as to reinforce the trend, and you could become a participant in a vicious circle.

Moreover, it turns out that a "sophisticated" put shopper can dispense with the market maker altogether. If the market maker can cancel his risk by shorting the put and the stock, a put shopper can equivalize the risk of holding an unhedged put by trading like the market maker would. This is the notorious portfolio insurance that was a prime suspect in the 1987 crash.

Now consider that the financial system, expecially the big insitutions, are highly leveraged. Suppose it's June 2008 and you have bought a "diversified" package of concocted illiquid "AAA" securities from Wall Street. You are getting worried. How do you protect yourself against the decline of illiquid composite instruments that are so complicated that no one understands their details?--By shorting liquid instruments that are related as closely as possible to your holdings. You protect yourself against systemic risk by shorting the system. So you're ready to go: when trouble appears, you short the stocks of large-cap financial institutions.

The amount of money in these holdings is many times the net worth of the financial system, the potential for a vicious circle is compounded many times.

If I had a case, I'd rest it with a flourish now, but all I have is a plausibility argument so I'll mundanely stop.

My Dinocrat comment is here.

Addendum 20090806. Suppose the value of those illiquid securities is many times the value of the issuing institution, and people try to hedge with the value of the stock...

Tea and Antipathy

I never liked the goo-goo left, but neither have I ever been entirely comfortable with the religious right as a political force.

People are holding tea parties to protest Obama's economic policies. Salt-of-the-earth Americans. They've been there all along.

Yet the religious right has ignored them all along. Instead it has allied with the Bush/Rove/Lott/DeLay/Cunningham/Abramoff crowd to get working control over the GOP.

It confirms my suspicion that they want to force an illegitimate agenda on the country via government.

It Takes a Police State To Raise a Child

So says Texas Senator John Cornyn (Republican, of course), who believes all online activity should be archived for the police to peruse at their leisure:

"Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level."

Background:

(CNET) -- Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that would require all Internet providers and operators of millions of Wi-Fi access points, even hotels, local coffee shops, and home users, to keep records about users for two years to aid police investigations.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, supporter of a bill that would require Internet user records to be saved for police.

The legislation, which echoes a measure proposed by one of their Democratic colleagues three years ago, would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates.

(HT: The Next Right, where I have ranted at greater length than here.)

Addendum 20090226. I just googled "inferring meaning in random data"[1]. At the bottom of the page, there was

In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org.

I don't know if the request is spurious or if Google's search engine is flawed, but I am entirely capable of navigating away from illegal material if I stumble into it. Except, of course, even if I do, I might get a visit from the police should Cornyn get his way.

And how long before people submit spurious complaints to search engines in order to suppress ideas they disagree with? I guess we'll have to hire more lawyers & more bureaucreats to assure that doesn't happen: everybody knows that the solution to a problem caused by big government is to make government bigger.
----------------
[1] I had recently found but forgotten the words 'pareidolia' and 'apophenia', and was trying to remember them

Be President, Barry

"House Democrats propose $410B spending bill", reports the AP. Including an 8% increase during a dangerous recession.

One of Bush's biggest mistakes was his failure, afaik, to veto a single spending bill while his party controlled Congress. Obama should not repeat it.

Let me fantasize. Everybody (Pelosi, Reid, etc.) gathers for the signing. Obama marches in stonefaced and announces he's not going to waste the American people's money with this and this and this and too much else to mention. He takes out a magic marker and writes a big block-letter VETO that he holds up for the cameras. Saying "Madame Speaker, take this back and fix it," he starts to hand the bill to Pelosi, but then he stops and says, "No, just start over." And marches out.

Seriously, "the President is who you vote for to protect you from other people's Congressmen." Obama should make it publicly clear that he is such a President. (Is he?) Note that early in his administration, Reagan fired government air traffic controllers who were striking illegally, even though their union had supported him in the election.

In other words, Obama should set up a kinder, gentler Sister Soujah moment with Pelosi.

Wow

Straight talk from Maureen Dowd:

We need leaders to help us through our crises, not provide us with crude evaluations of our character. And we don’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, anymore than from conservative virtuecrats.

The whole thing is worth reading. I'm gobsmacked to find myself agreeing with Maureen Dowd, but good for her. More like this, please. From all sides. This is America.

The Complexity Bubble May Not Deflate

At least, not without taking society with it.

I've remarked, elsewhere if not here, that Congress routinely passes bills that are too long to read. Obviously, things are being insinuated into those bills. Here's an example in the 'stimulus' legislation:

The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board...The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.

In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.”...(p)The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target.

I asked Grassley how he learned that the RAT Board was part of the stimulus bill. You’d think that as a member of the House-Senate conference committee, he would have known all about it. But it turns out Grassley’s office first heard about the provision creating the RAT Board last Wednesday, in a tip from a worried inspector general...(p)When I inquired with the office of a Democratic senator, one who is a big fan of inspectors general, I was told the RAT Board was “something the Obama administration wanted included in this bill.”

Note both the power grab by the White House and the fact that it was snuck into an unrelated piece of legislation that the people who passed it did not read in its entirety.

Things fall apart?

'Nation of Cowards'

Attorney General Eric Holder speaks.

Well, after that, I wait for Elder to crack down on unnecessary speech codes that stifle legitimate free expression in the academy and workplace. I wait for him to crack down on spurious litigation about 'hostile work environments' and the like. I expect to be waiting a long time.

To be fair, a passage in Obama's Inaugural Address--

We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve...

--speaks to my sense of American exceptionalism: that the US has the opportunity to become the template for an advanced post-tribal society. The opportunity...

An Invisible Hand or One Hand Washing Another?

Despite plummeting oil prices, gas prices went up 15% in January. I didn't keep track of the dates, but at my station the price is up from a low of $1.57/gal to $1.88--while the price of oil has continued to drop.

1. Is this the invisible hand in action, or is it one hand washing another? Surely the oil companies wouldn't try price fixing in this market...or would they, with or without government collusion? Are new taxes being passed on to the consumer? What's going on?

2. Why hasn't this obvious price increase been mentioned by the media?

3. Why hasn't it been mentioned by our representatives, who are ever vigilant on our behalf?

Imminent Detection of Quantum Gravity?

I thought it was out of reach for the foreseeable future. In fact, I thought it was out of reach for humanity as we know it.

But look here (HT: arXiv blog).

Or here.

(Of course, detecting it--which remains to be established--doesn't mean you understand it, or that you've learned enough to try to understand it. Nevertheless this post's label is valid.)

Doth This Man Have the Right Sow by the Ear?

After a day like today in the market, voicing optimism feels like, ah, spitting into a strong wind.

The fact remains that insider buying continues robust. Knock on wood that they don't start selling after this major drop in the indices.

Here's another professor with a constructive attitude. Money quote (written just before the meltdown):

Our Venturesome Economy (TM !) has demonstrated a capacity to develop and deploy innovations that sustain our long run prosperity in good times and in bad. Personal computers recall took off in the dark days of the early 1980s. But we mustn’t let the ill-will generated by bad financial innovations lead to policies that harm innovators in the good economy! Clean out the stable, but please keep the horse.

I hope he's right.

Sheila Bair, Again

Dinocrat smells a rat behind Geithner's bad speech.

From the FT piece linked in the update:

...Mr Geithner’s sketchy plan raised suspicions of internal disagreement over the bail-out. Officials strongly deny those rumours, particularly any hint of divergence between Lawrence Summers, the head of the White House National Economic Council, and Mr Geithner, a former protégé of Mr Summers – though some acknowledge differences between the government and independent agencies involved in the process.

Bush-appointed FDIC head Sheila Bair is necessarily the only culprit, but she is an obvious one. This is worse than a leftist cabal. It's a compassionate conservative who cares about The Children.

Bair has essentially no private-sector experience. Apparently she views her agency, which is independent, as having powers which parallel some of the Treasury Department's functions. She gets fawning write-ups in the liberal media:

The high-ranking government official most likely to attack Obama's economic policies from the left is ... a Republican?

I take it as a contrarian indicator that Larry "Goldilocks Economy" Kudlow likes her.

To be fair, Bair spotted the housing trouble in late 2007, but her proposed solution was to have ARM teaser rates be made permanent. Unsurprisingly, the banks were not enthusiastic. (And lots of people saw the problem looming. Bair's approach, arguably, is to demagogue the situation and grab for power that she seems unqualified to wield.)

No worries, though. According to the Examiner piece linked in the previous paragraph:

Bair, though, said she remains "very much a capitalist."

For more reassurance, let's hear Obama say that he remains very much committed to holding elections in 2010 and 2012...

A Cultural Contradiction of Libertarianism

My instincts with respect to pornography and drugs are (ah, hard-core) libertarian.

Nevertheless, my gut feeling is that a society which flaunts genital flirting on the cover of a mass-circulation publication has gone signficantly awry.

Just because the government shouldn't control it doesn't mean it's healthy.

Just because it's suitable for discreet private use doesn't mean it should be splashed all over every public forum.
****************
The cover of the 2009 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue shows Israeli model Bar Refaeli toying with the microscopic bikini bottom that she has taken partway off. Refaeli:

"This is the one I felt the most comfortable with...You have the beach, blue water and a body. That's it. I liked that the top of the suit was on."

Well, of course. She may act naughty, but she's really a nice Jewish girl. Gotta stay eligible to snag that tycoon hubbie, y'know...

SI speaks:

It's the cover that matters most, says SI group editor Terry McDonell...Refaeli wears a string bikini by Missoni — and the strings on the bikini bottom are being tugged south.

"The cover has to reflect the athleticism and sexiness of the culture. This photo is modern, her hair and swimsuit look natural. You see her freckles. Her body is amazing and she looks intelligent," McDonell said.

I'm all for athleticism and sexiness, but I wonder how much of the exercising is performed to enable people to spend more time f***ing. Not healthy.

Meanwhile, the libertines' counterparts in the culture wars, the cornfed religious right whose focus is on exorcising, are also obsessed about sex, but in a repressive way.

Both have me uneasy about the future.

Addendum. I had mixed feelings about whether Refaeli's ethnicity and citizenship were germane to this post. It turns out that they are:

In 2007, Refaeli became a source of controversy when it became known that she had evaded military service, mandatory for Israeli citizens over 18-years-old, by marrying a family acquaintance and divorcing him soon after. Refaeli stated in an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, "I really wanted to serve in the IDF, but I don't regret not enlisting, because it paid off big-time," further adding, "Why is it good to die for our country? What, isn't it better to live in New York City?" Refaeli has since said the interview didn't accurately reflect her statements and threatened to file a lawsuit for libel. Consequently, the Israeli Forum for the Promotion of Equal Share in the Burden threatened to boycott the fashion chain Fox if they hired Refaeli, but the two sides reached a compromise in which the model agreed to visit injured IDF soldiers on visits to Israel and encourage enlistment in the army.

Societal acquiescence to her prominence is not a positive indicator for the futures of America and of Israel.

The New Kid Has Trouble Getting His Bearings

Dinocrat writes: President Obama has no executive experience. It would be an indication that he is learning on the job if he starts cutting back on his hyperbolic rhetoric. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long four years.

I agree completely, just as I agreed with George Will a few months ago:

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

No guarantees.

With fingers crossed, I remember that Bill Clinton got off to a very rocky start and wound up with a successful Presidency (one that would have been extremely successful if not for his personal flaws).

Outing 'Climate Science'

Richard Lindzen has broken the scientific establishment's 'blue wall of silence'. His Introduction has something important to say about how our culture has devolved.

Somewhere, Lysenko is laughing.

Rocket Scientists are Smart...and Blameless

Here. The article has much to agree with, but I am uneasy with wording like this:

So if it is the physicists who are to blame, how do we explain the fact that large and not-so-large crashes have been appearing with frequencies that are approximately time-independent?

Just because no single component of a system is exclusively responsible for a systemic failure does not mean that every component is blameless.

And all the children sing:

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

(Tom Lehrer, understandably, perhaps is too harsh on von Braun--but not off target.)

They Knew It All Along

Jack Risko quotes Business Week about the new conventional wisdom at Davos.

1. Everyone stupidly failed to see the financial calamity coming except roughly four economists who now must be heeded in everything they say and all they predict.

Ouch. I thought the shoe would drop at some point, but didn't expect it in 2008. I made decisions on the basis that the establishment had the minimal competence to duct-tape together a decent election-year economy.

I'm pretty sure that some economists who were correct last year have been wrong for many prior years. Hopefully sooner rather than later, the pessimists will go back to being wrong. That is not to say that their views are without merit.

Speaking of wrong economists, Alan Greenspan was just about the only major culprit with the intellectual integrity to admit he was mistaken. I wish he would resume speaking out. His thoughts have value and the derision they would attract would be appropriate penance.

2. The private sector has ruined the global economy and can no longer be trusted. 3. Government is ascendant, with regulation closest to godliness.

I don't mean to shug off a dangerous and inexcusable situation, but it remains true that risk is a cost of progress.

IMHO the people who are shocked shocked to discover they can't trust the private sector have, in fact, never had much good to say about it. Since we can't trust the private sector, apparently it follows that we should trust the government.

Regulation keeps us brutish greedy peasants to a semblance of civilized behavior. Regulation is not intended to waste the invaluable time of the extremely busy idealists who serve as regulators. (/sarc)

4. These conclusions are correct and will stand the test of time…

Per Jack, my fear is that these conclusions are incorrect but will stand the test of time.

Mitt Romney

Romney returned to Massachusetts to run for governor. He won and had a successful first term. He chose not to seek reelection in 2006, presumably in order to focus on preparing a Presidential campaign.

Rhetorically gifted Deval Patrick upset an establishment candidate for the Democratic nomination and easily won the general election to become the state's first black governor.

Suppose Romney had braved the odds and defeated a charismatic black challenger in a Democratic year. He would have entered the 2008 primaries as the sitting conservative governor of a liberal state. He would have been the natural candidate to oppose Obama (and his record would have have been clearly stronger than Hillary's). Picking Palin as VP would have secured the support of the religious right and swung a few female votes. IMO his chances would have been far better than McCain's (and don't forget that McCain had taken a small lead before his intemperate reaction to the financial crisis). IMO the financial crisis would have strengthened his candidacy.

The moral also applies to Hillary 2004:

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all.

Obama's First Inaugural Address

The text is here.

In contrast to many online reactions, I liked it at first reading. (Is much of the widespread negative tone online due to the fact that it's easier to criticize than to formulate something defensibly constructive?)

A key paragraph:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

As an American exceptionalist in my fashion, I was pleased to read that. IMO a major, essential part of American exceptionalism is the USA's unique opportunity to become a template for a modern post-tribal society.

Unfortunately, I do not see how creating protected classes and quotas--almost fifty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964--is a step in this direction. It is necessary to accentuate tribal distinctions in order to dissolve them? Ben Tre logic?

Martin Luther King Day

My gut impression: King does not strike me as a great moral leader. He strikes me as a great political leader who harvested a ripe moral issue.

This is meant as objectivity, not as criticism.

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

Bank of America, which supposedly was going to save Merrill Lynch's role in the financial system, now wants more TARP money to absorb Merrill's losses. After its stock nearly tripled from its recent low, Citicorp is plunging again.

Barney Frank and Phil Gramm have indignantly declared themselves blameless. Bernanke is an expert on the Great Depression, but he let Lehman fail. Paulson was going to buy up troubled assets, and then he wasn't. (Geithner didn't do his taxes correctly.)

This as though we'd broken the Japanese code in 1940 and then let Pearl Harbor happen anyway.

Addendum. Someone--I didn't save the link--argued that a binding government guarantee to cover unforeseen Merrill losses must have been part of the inducement for BofA to do the acquisition. Plausible but not compelling, IMO.

Instapundit and Porkbusters

Glenn Reynolds harrumphs about government waste and links to the Porkbusters site. As I type, its front page has not been updated since 2* May 2008. About Porkbusters:

Porkbusters was conceived of by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame in the fall of 2005. Seeking help implementing his vision, he approached N.Z. Bear (now "out of the bear cave" and known also by his given name, Rob Neppell) and Porkbusters.org was born.

Ah, yes, a visionary. Experience has made "visionary" a dirty word to me...

I liked Instapundit a lot more when Reynolds had the 'If you have a modem, I have an opinion' logo.

Tax the Internet and Save the Planet!

The logical but (as-yet) unspoken corollary to this.

Addendum. Times commenter Don L of Hartford, CT anticipated the above post, using words identical to my title.

Addendum 20090114. US News reports that both Google and Alex Wissner-Gross, the author "quoted" by the UK Times, dispute the report. Network World:

Wissner-Gross said he did discuss Google with the newspaper in broad generalizations, in that Google uses energy, and that the generation of that energy would cause CO2 to be released.

However, Wissner-Gross said one of The Sunday Times writers seemed eager to confirm the seven-gram figure and link it to Google. The researcher said he did not do so. Wissner-Gross said he saw a draft of the story before publication and suggested some changes, but those edits were not made.

Efforts to reach the writers at The Sunday Times were unsuccessful.

How shocking to learn that a major newspaper might be slanting the news according to a predetermined agenda...

Climate Change

Several bloggers have noted that the Huffington Post, of all places, has published a slam against Gore and his shtick.
*********************************
IMO the real issue is not whether warming--ditto for cooling--is real and (if real) humanly caused. The real issue is whether we can make a determination with enough confidence to warrant immediate reengineering of our economy.

I don't question that there are forces that tend to warm (or cool) the earth. I don't doubt that the magnitude of each of these can be estimated reasonably well, but I am dubious that the short- and long-term feedbacks can be adequately quantified. I doubt that every relevant force has been identified.

And I am completely unconvinced that reliable predictions can be made about the resultant of offsetting forces.

It's possible that in the foreseeable future the climate will continue muddling along; it's possible that warming or cooling will emerge as an overriding ecological threat. However, it would be foolish or worse to reconfigure our civilization on the basis of what is understood today.

Roger Ehrenberg

After I've been thinking a semblance of normalcy is returning and watching the stock market move upward, this is chilling:

...the economic underpinnings of the US have become so fractured that it risks being marginalized on the global stage. This "change in fundamentals" that is creeping up on us? Our creditor's willingness to hold dollar-denominated assets in general and to finance our persistent budget deficits in particular. This is the real credit crisis facing the US.

Why are things different this time? The Great Depression is held up as the singular economic event in the US to be avoided at all costs. The Government put "safety nets" in place to help those who cannot help themselves in difficult times. But this doesn’t tell the whole story. We, as a nation, have been spending far beyond our means for generations; so much so, in fact, that the purported safety nets place a greater risk to our future than the risks they were created to avoid...

(Boldface mine.)

Bad News and Good News

The bad news: Whatever Happened to Silicon Valley Innovation?, asks Business Week.

Since Business Week covers have a reputation as contrary indicators, the good news is that What's Wrong With Silicon Valley (And How To Make It Right) is this week's cover.
******************
I wonder whether much--not all--of what Silicon Valley has done should be called exploitation rather than innovation. In particular, I'm thinking about the creation and basic infrastructure of the Internet. Libertarian purists are not keen to note that the Net is a child of the military-industrial complex.

I'm No Fan of This Guy, but He Has a Point

Chris Weigant:

Two images will bookend the history of George W. Bush and Iraq: the "Mission Accomplished" banner, and an Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at Bush's head.

Some would prefer a photo of Bush being led away in chains and orange pajamas, but IMO such criminalization of foreign-policy decisions would significantly accelerate our decline.

Find a rationale to throw him in jail for gross economic mismanagement and you've got my attention.

Obama's Chiseled Pecs

The Anchoress comments.

Is this the subliminal message that Obama's MSM acolytes are trying to convey? Talk about a photoshop op!

Last year similar photos of Putin appeared. Is it just me, or does his body look more brutally functional than Obama's?

This Man Hath the Right Sow By the Ear*

Secular Right commenter Polichinello:

IOW, an argument for any given issue–abortion, gay “marriage”, euthanasia, etc–should not start and end with “Because God said so.” It should be based on and explicated with evidence and reason available to anyone, and if you can’t do that, then so much the worse for the argument.

He's commenting on Kathleen Parker, a columnist about whom the little I know leaves me with no wish to know more.
-----------
*H/T: Henry VIII.

Good News! No Depression Ahead...Probably

Intrade currently has the chance of a 2009 US depression as less than one in seven (down from one in five around election time).

At the moment the contract is currently on the front page. Alternatively, click on 'Financial' in the lefthand column of the front page. Then click on 'Economic Numbers' in the subheading.

Addendum. Back when all seemed under control, NYU Professor Nouriel Roubini sounded the alarm about the crisis and earned the nickname 'Dr. Doom'. He believes the worst is still to come but does not expect a depression.

Addendum 20081225. The Intrade chance of a 2009 depression has risen to 30%.

Ho ho ho.

The GOP's Parasites Still[1] Remain in Charge

The House Republicans just defeated a leadership proposal to forego earmarks for three months.

To the devil with those worthless parasites.

Speaking of the devil, Mike Huckabee, "the Christian candidate", has stated that libertarians are a threat to conservatism and the GOP. Yes, libertarians.
------------
[1] Original post here.

Trickle-Down Biotech?

Glenn Reynolds:

But what’s really nice about today’s world is that lots of things that were luxuries a few years ago are cheap — flat-screen HDTVs for under $500, for example. It’s possible to live quite well, even luxuriously in many respects, by the standards of previous decades on not all that much money, if you don’t insist on having the biggest, latest and trendiest.

This should be a model for the research and deployment of medical treatments.

Should be but won't. The political demagogic class will never tolerate having a life-saving treatment restricted to "the rich" even though the restriction is temporary--and the alternative, if any, is a slowed development cycle.

Million-Year Plan

The EPA has changed its mind about requiring a ten-thousand year assurance that Yucca Mountain will be a safe nuclear repository. It now requires a million-year assurance.

Are these people being paid off by interests like the Saudis, are they treasonous fanatics, are they callous cynics feathering their nests at the expense of society, or are they plain stupid? (Some of each, presumably.)

Piracy

An Iranian grain ship is the latest to be seized.

Fortunately, the intelligentsia is on the case:

Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank, said that the capture was a crucial escalation. “Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You won’t fix this without a political solution.”

Actually, you could create a desolation and call it peace. On both practical and moral grounds, I don't favor that course at the moment, but you aren't thinking clearly if you don't put it on the list of options.
*************
Wait till pirates seize a cruise ship and demand a billion-dollar ransom.

Obviously there are not too many cruises near Somalia, but Haiti and similar Caribbean hellholes are possible staging areas.
************
The linked story claims that the Somali government is about to collapse as regrouped Islamists converge on the capital.

Was this in effect a repeat of Iraq? Did we engineer the ouster of the Islamists without giving thought to what would happen next?

Addendum 20090426. The foregoing was in the ballpark:

The captain of an Italian cruise ship carrying 1,500 passengers says his security staff fought off a pirate attack in the Indian Ocean with pistols and a water hose.

I underestimated either the pirates' technology or the cruise line's imprudence. Thank heaven the pirates were repelled. I hope, but am not confident, that there will not be investigations, by governments or NGOs, of 'disproportionate response'.

Cloning Frozen Mice

Japanese scientists have done it with mice that had been frozen for 16 years..

Will extinct species be next? The article quite properly expresses daunting reservations, but I remember when freezing supposedly did irreversible damage to cells.

The prospect of restoring the mammoths gives me chills.

Addendum. According to the NYT, a mammoth might be (re)created for as little as $10M. A Neanderthal might be possible although the means currently available, if I understand the article correctly, exacerbate the serious ethical issues.

Coming Soon: Living in a Computer Simulation

Mirror's Edge is an action video game. Its body-centered perspective is so realistic that players are said to vomit from vertigo.

Much much more is coming along such lines. For example, climb mountains in a virtual-reality body suit at reduced (or increased!) gravity. Climb Olympus Mons, for that matter.

And who needs human modes of locomotion? Maximize efficiency by training drivers, pilots, and operators to have a vehicle- or machine-centric perspective.

And who needs human bodies when just the brain is doing the work?

Etc. Much much more to come.

Obvious Words, Well Written

Bill Kristol writes that the GOP governors' meeting was constructive but somehow failed to confront the failed Bush economic legacy:

From 1933 to 1980, Republicans repeatedly failed to convince the country they were no longer the party of Herbert Hoover — the party, as it was perceived, of economic incompetence, austerity and recession (if not depression).

Only two Republicans won presidential elections in that half-century, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Both were able to take the White House only because we were mired down in difficult wars, in Korea and Vietnam. And Ike and Nixon were unable — they didn’t really try — to change the generally liberal course of domestic and economic policy. The G.O.P.’s fate on Capitol Hill was worse. The party controlled Congress for only 4 of those 47 years.

That’s what happens when a depression begins on your watch and when you can’t offer a coherent explanation of how and why it occurred and what you are going to do differently. That’s what happens when instead of having such an explanation, you spend decades in quarrels between pragmatic but unimaginative moderates who seek to be better tax collectors for the liberal welfare state, and principled but fanciful conservatives who hope for a wholesale rejection of that welfare state. And the fact that there were many successful Republican governors in those years didn’t much change the party’s status nationally.

The whole piece is worth reading.

Gitmo: Mend It, Don't End It

Next time the executives of a bailed-out bank give themselves bonuses while assuring us that government dollars weren't used...whoosh!

As for the prosperous respectable people, well hidden in the shadows, who suborned the government to open the border and flood the country with illegal aliens: lock 'em up! (Not the illegals, but the people who invited them. The fact that the illegals were invited is one of the toughest aspects of how to deal with them.)

Addenda. Who else deserves to go?

Bush, obviously.

Phil Gramm.

Barney Frank.

I'll give Greenspan probation because he voluntarily admitted he was wrong.

Hedge Fund Day at the House of Representatives

The House Committee on Oversight is holding hearings on the financial crisis. Thursday was Hedge Fund Day. According to George Soros,

The race to save the international financial system is still ongoing. Even if it is successful, consumers, investors, and businesses are undergoing a traumatic experience whose full impact on global economic activity is yet to be felt. A deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out. When I predicted earlier this year that we were facing the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, I did not anticipate that conditions would deteriorate so badly.

Otoh, Soros the trader is known to change his mind in a twinkling and reverse his positions accordingly.

(An old hand at testifying before Congress, Soros used the occasion to market his latest book. Not to be outdone, Indiana Republican Mark Souder took the opportunity to rant in favor of the War on Drugs.)

Addendum.The first link above is a generic link to the committee's continually updated hearings page. The committee held hearings on Lehman, AIG, rating agencies, regulation, and hedge funds.

Good Humor

Americans have always despised each other, so I'm not unduly upset by the elites' putdowns of flyover country; what gets my goat is the cloddish way the supposed sophisticates go about it. The NY Times' photo of 'Jeb Mason, the Treasury’s liaison to businesses...32, a lanky Texan in black cowboy boots who once worked in the White House for Karl Rove' is an artistic exception.

Toward Regeneration of Body Parts

The technique is called nanoscaffolding. The latest progress comes from US Army efforts, but research is ongoing around the world.

Wow. It's impossible to resist speculating where this might go:

What about replacing body parts lost to disease or surgery? What about in vitro?

Minor Afterthoughts to the Election

Kathryn Jean Lopez quotes a National Review staffer. The whole thing is worthwhile but this caught my eye:

2) Where was Bush? Once again, and right to the bitter end, he let his passion for "loyalty" supersede what was stragetically right for the party, not to mention what was best for the country. I think his reputation has nowhere to go but down; yes, he got one big thing right, but he got everything else wrong. Enough of this family in our country's politics!

If Bush had campaigned, IMO the loss would have been bigger, and I don't know how his passion for loyalty played a role in the election. Above all, this requires a correction:

I think his reputation has nowhere to go but down; yes, maybe he got one big thing partly right, but he got everything else wrong.

Fixed it.

And I couldn't agree more with the good-riddance to Liddy Dole. My immediate and never mitigated reaction to her was instinctive loathing.

Shielding Space Travelers From Solar Storms

Apparently the Europeans have devised a compact magnetic shield. A simulation was reported here. Preliminary measurements are reported here.

I've read that passengers on a space elevator passing through the Van Allen belts would be endangered by radiation, and that strength of the elevator material could be endangered by radiation-produced defects. Might the magnetic technology be adapted to this situation?